


I Guess This is What We're Supposed To Learn

by piecesofalice



Category: Law & Order: Criminal Intent
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-30
Updated: 2011-04-30
Packaged: 2017-10-18 19:57:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/192673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piecesofalice/pseuds/piecesofalice





	I Guess This is What We're Supposed To Learn

_I thought of taking it back,  
But words have a life of their own_   
\- Hawksley Workman, 'Devastating'

 

\---

She sits in Captain Ross' chair for an hour and forty minutes after calling the chief. Not her chair, not _a_ chair - Captain Ross' chair, and Deakins' before him.

 

Never _her_ chair, because she'd burnt out that part of herself before it even had a chance to begin.

 

She grabs her coat and heads for the door, saying goodbye to Mick, waving slightly at Daniels, and tries to remember to call Rodgers in the morning. _Everyone will know by then,_ she thinks, _everyone will know you gave everything up for a man two steps away from being a certified nutcase._

 

The tears threaten to come, but they don't, because she's got to pull her coat on and swipe out and remain absolutely calm because she's _her_ , dammit - and she thinks she's doing pretty damn well, given the circumstances.

 

He's waiting for her as she exits the building. She wonders briefly what he'd been doing for an hour and (now) forty-five minutes, but he's him, and she's her and everything is done without saying a single word or an ounce of surprise.

 

Shuffling his feet against the concrete, his hands are in his pockets; he's creating a tableaux she's seen everyday for the past ten years, through a baby and death - _so much death_ \- and she suddenly wills him to say something, anything, that proves to her the stupid idea that suddenly comes to mind that he's a mind reader from another planet who's been placed in her life to make it all that more complicated.

 

But, she knows, it's never been a complicated she's entirely minded, so she peers up at his face - older, now, greyer and creased like an old shirt - and squints, so she can see the man he was when they first met across two desks in the middle of a squad room full of cops.

 

He meets her eye, and for the first time in a long time, she sees something like a confirmation.

 

"Are you hungry?"

 

"I could eat."

 

"We could go have dinner."

 

"Okay."

 

"I know a place."

 

"Sure."

 

She can't tell who took whose hand first, but it seemed like everything was pulled back to another beginning.

 

\---

 

She serves her notice, and she's given a boat-load of flowers and a leather-bound notebook with her initials pressed into it by the Major Case Squad team. Rodgers kisses her on the cheek, blonde where she used to be red, and the clock seems to be ticking louder and louder before finally, it's time to leave.

 

An old Mustang picks her up from the footpath, the ragged marks of sanded-back paint expose it for the semi-retirement project it was.

 

"I was the only one left," she says, after she's slid onto the half-upholstered seats, her face hidden by lilies.

 

"Hmm?" He's watching the road, but she knows one eye is on her. Like always, and she shuffles the rustling paper and leaves so she can watch him back.

 

"Deakins. Ross. You. Me. Carver. Logan. Wheeler. Barek."

 

"Better things," and she barely hears him above the crackling engine.

 

"Better things," she echoes, and New York City feels brand new.

 

\---

 

They never talk about it. Why she left. Why they left together, and why it was always going to be that way.

 

When she asks herself, late at night when there's nothing else to think about, she realises - sharply, soundly - that she honestly hasn't got the faintest idea why.

 

\---

 

Moving through the consultancy field, she tackles her projects with a tenacity she hadn't felt since everything started to fall apart. Since before Joe died, before having her nephew, before Robert Goren became her Next-Of-Kin on her insurance forms and personel file.

 

 _Before before before._

 

Always before, and she picks up the phone to call her former partner at the exact time he knocks on her front door.

 

 _Always._

 

\---

 

Time has no meaning, she thinks, as she wakes up on her forty-fifth birthday with nothing left to do but live.

 

She ponders this, walking down the stairs in the little house she'd finally finished unpacking after seven years; the house she'd put framed pictures drawn by her nephew on the walls and decorated the halls with photographs of the city skyline taken by Joe (what felt like) a hundred and fifty years ago.

 

This was the tiny house she'd bought after her husband was killed. The house she'd finally sold after hanging on to it for far too long, like four walls and a roof had the ability to keep Joe alive in one way or another. "He's more than a house," her partner had said, back when he was dark-haired and thinner, his face like a James Dean wannabe in a suit and tie.

 

(The Jimmy Dean image, she knows, probably wasn't true, but she can barely remember a time when he wasn't romanticized in her mind - probably for the sake of preserving her own memories when the newer ones were so tarnished by events that neither of them could control.)

 

She remembers her sister frantically calling her, pulling out due to an emergency after she'd said she'd come to sign the settlement papers, and how he'd just _appeared_ \- talking to her of ridiculous facts and useless anecdotes so they both could pretend her hands weren't shaking as she signed her married name for one last time.

 

The tiny house she'd bought after always seemed larger when he was in it. Brighter, more organised. Seamless, because they were both so emotionally ripped at the seams, the best way to deal with it was to sow themselves together.

 

The night her waters broke, he'd picked her up from the front garden that was more a pavement than an actual garden, handed her over to her sister and smiled at her in that half-a-way that seemed to say everything that he couldn't. The night his mother had died, sitting on the couch with a patchwork cushion in his hand as they'd just sat there, in silence. The day after Ross' body had pulled them out into the cold night, the twitches of light pushing through her curtains as they'd listened to the clock in their own, silent way.

 

That day, in this tiny house, was when, she knew, they had to pull together or always be pushed apart.

 

It took a decade and a bit for them to come to this point - one a helluva emotional rollercoaster ride where, at the end, she found she relied more on the idea of fate than she ever thought possible.

 

\---

 

On the morning of her forty-fifth birthday, as she walks down the stairs and into her tiny kitchen and her tiny house, she finds herself coming to terms with the idea that even the most obvious of gifts can only be realised after everything else that's stopping it from shining is pushed away.

 

He's sitting at her table, a bagel with a candle propped up in the middle, as he reads the Saturday paper in her dining room like it was the most natural thing on earth.

 

She sits down behind her birthday bagel and his face lights up - his smile reaches his eyes, finally, and she almost starts crying.

 

"Happy birthday."

 

He's always going to be devastating to her. Always, before, today and tomorrow; and she reaches across the table and takes his hand, firmly.

 

\---

 

 _Fin._

 

\---


End file.
